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ICAN give you ten reasons why the European Union's bosses - by which I mean, the Germans - should not be allowed to create a European version of the International Monetary Fund.

And if you haven't been following what's up, I'm not surprised, since most of the debate has been conducted in German between men with names like Jurgen, Wolfgang and Axel and a woman called the Bundeskanzlerin.

Yes, that is our future now - if you want to see who intends to take control of our national budgets in future, you'd better learn to understand German. There's no need to learn to speak it, however, as voicing any protests will get you nowhere.

Some of the most influential Germans, including finance minister Wolfgang Schauble, have been talking about setting up a European Monetary Fund.

Argument They say they want to ensure that in future, when a European economy tanks, as Greece has done, there will be no need for the country in trouble to turn for help to the IMF (for which read, the Americans).

Of course, the Bundesfinanzminister and the rest have made no argument at all that the IMF, with 40 years of experience, couldn't do a good job at helping Greece right now, or any other EU country in the future.

But the Germans, along with the junior EU bosses, the French, don't care about sense or efficiency in any of this. The move to set up a new, expensive (you bet), powerful and exclusively European institution is all part of trying to build European nationalism.

Indeed, it is more than that. This move is part of the drive to extend the powers of the evermore-centralised EU, using the present troubles among Eurozone members as an excuse. What they are aiming for is the establishment of an economic government of the member states - Eurozone first, then every EU member state. Stand by for a new treaty.

Those are just a few of the list of objections to any setting up of an EMF, of which Ireland would be forced to be a member.

But there is also this objection.

As things stand, a country can turn to the IMF for advice and help, but if it doesn't like the advice, it can turn down the help. I'm thinking in particular of Poland, the only economy in the EU to grow last year.

According to finance minister Jacek Rostowski in an interview earlier this week with the Financial Times, one of the reasons Poland managed to grow was that he had 'rejected deficit-boosting advice given to him by the IMF, and those [countries] who had followed it had run into difficulties'.

Now, one thing we know about anything run by the EU - no member state is ever free to reject its 'advice'. The EU doesn't give helpful suggestions.

It gives orders. If a member state doesn't follow orders, it ends up in the European Court of Justice.

Under this idea of an EMF, no member state would be free to do what Poland did when it rejected advice from the IMF.

More, this trouble in the Eurozone has everyone nodding their heads in agreement with the suggestion (in the original German) that there must now and forever be greater surveillance of each member state's national budget. …